The Best Rumbas for Guitar Students - 3 Patterns for Study

Having taught thousands of guitar students over the decades and used just about every book there is, I keep coming back to only a few rumbas when I teach how to play this fun Spanish guitar style. 

The Rumba Basics

Rumbas can be counted in 4/4 or 2/4 time (I'm partial to counting in 4/4) and typically have an accent on the 1st and 4th beats with a heavier accent between beats 2 and 3 (on the "and" of 2). When first learning the rumba however, I believe it's better to simply practice strumming down/up in 4/4 time (8 strokes per measure) to get the basic template of the rumba and then begin making adjustments from there. A good place to start (and one that gives students a lot of trouble) is putting a "tie" from the "and" of 2 to the 3rd beat. All that we're doing here is "skipping" the 3 while keeping our hand moving so as not to lose momentum:

In the above example (taken from one of my Top 3 Rumbas for students) we can see how this pattern would be written. This is actually a quite common strumming pattern in popular music so if you've done some strumming before learning Spanish guitar, you may already be ahead of the game! The important thing here is the keep moving over the "skipped" stroke as if you were strumming normally. If you hesitate, you will be be immediately off time!

De facto accents

Sometimes you can call attention to something simply by doing nothing. Notice how in my example above we are not doing anything just after our "and of 2" accent. That really makes this accent stand out which is an essential rumba element!

Slapping the Guitar in a Rumba

Another type of rumba I like to teach incorporates percussive elements. Notice in this rumba example that instead of strumming on the 1st beat, we're playing just the root of the chord with the thumb which makes this pattern more three dimensional:

 We're also slapping or hitting the guitar on the 3rd beat followed by the very common up/down/up strokes with the index just as we saw in the first pattern.

The 3-3-2 Concept

If we go back to our earlier explanation of rumba accents (that there's an accent on the 1, the and of 2, and the 4 ), an interesting grouping emerges. Let's think of a measure in 4/4 time with nothing by 8th notes:

All of these notes are equal, but the accents produce a group of 3, another group of 3 followed by a group of 2. This is the rumba rhythm defined. By counting 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2 we can easily and clearly get the gist of what the rumba is all about.

If we apply this accent pattern to an arpeggio we get the 3rd rumba concept I teach all my students:

The Sky is the Rumba Limit!

Out of these three essential rhythmic ideas, we can create so many variations and so much musical sophistication. We can slap on different beats and include just about every Spanish guitar technique. We know to make an exciting rumba pattern. 

My Top 3 Rumbas for Students

In this video lesson, I go into more detail about these rumba elements and show you the exact songs I'm talking about and how to play them: 

Go here to get the free guitar tabs for Cuban Dance and "Rumbanza" as shown in this video.